The present invention relates to recovering from a jam condition in an item processing system, and is particularly directed to improving assistance to an operator to recover from a jam condition in an image-based financial document processing system such as an image-based check processing system.
A typical image-based check processing system includes a number of different types of workstations. The different types of workstations may include a document preparation workstation, an image capture workstation, a recognition workstation, a keying and balancing workstation, an encoding workstation, and a printing workstation. An image capture workstation creates units of work and submits the created work to a workflow manager in a known way. Each of the downstream workstations polls the workflow manager in a known manner for work to perform, and may also create units of work which is submitted back to the workflow manager. Image data and codeline data are processed at the different workstations.
From time to time, a jam condition may occur in a transport track of the image capture workstation or a transport track of the encoding workstation. Typically, when a jam condition occurs in a track, any check(s) in the track that have not been completely processed are manually located by an operator and removed from the track. To avoid problems further downstream, such as an out-of-balance condition, the operator must ensure that all checks which have not been completely processed are removed from the track. The removed checks must then be reprocessed.
The efforts required of the operator to first locate the checks which need to be reprocessed and then to determine how each check is to be reprocessed are manually performed and, therefore, are prone to error. This error-prone process may be relatively time-consuming. Typically, a MICR or OCR codeline, a sequence number, and a destination pocket associated with each incompletely processed check are listed for the operator. The operator must find each incompletely processed check and compare the codeline and sequence number, which may or may not be endorsed on each check, to the codelines and the sequence number listed for the operator. The operator must also examine each check to be reprocessed to determine if encoding and/or endorsing should be turned ON or OFF to prevent over-encoding and/or over-endorsing of the check during reprocessing.
The operator must also be careful to not reprocess checks which do not require reprocessing. If either a check which needs to be reprocessed is reprocessed incorrectly, or a check which does not require reprocessing is processed by mistake, downstream steps of balancing and reconciliation, for example, are made more difficult. The cost of operating the check processing system is, therefore, usually relatively high.